The 14 rules For Eternal Fascism: Jordan Peterson and the far right

Last year I had the pleasure of working with a group of underprivileged teenagers from Adelaide’s southern suburbs on a piece of devised theatre. Our starting theme was ‘heroes’, a topic broad enough to encompass early discussions about family members, sportspeople, Malala, and the kids from Stranger Things. We also talked about Heather Heyer, the anti-fascist protestor murdered in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a Unite the Right rally in 2017. Heyer didn’t make it into the final draft of the time-travelling play but one of her forbears did: Sophie Scholl, the anti-Nazi activist executed in Munich in 1943, at the age of 21.

None of the kids had heard of Scholl but it wasn’t necessary for me to spell out the congruities between the lives, and deaths, of these two young heroes, born more than sixty years apart. It was similarly unnecessary – at a time when the strengthening of the far right globally is as obvious to a fifteen year old as it is to me – to explain why making plays about such people might be an important thing to do.

For our structure, we initially looked to a tried and tested model: the Hero’s Journey, popularised by mythologist Joseph Campbell and the narrative bedrock of countless books and films. For reasons I won’t get into, I’d long wanted to include in a play a TED talk-style speech, and hit on the idea of a meta-explanation of the Hero’s Journey by a contemporary equivalent of Campbell.

But who to base this character on? I thought immediately of Jordan Peterson, a noted Campbell enthusiast, and together the group and I set about fashioning a character we ended up calling Jackson Jackson (in theatre, as in poetry, alliteration is almost never a good sign). In the final play, Jackson is interrupted in his talk by a female anti-fascist protestor who demands to know why he insists on using the masculine pronoun. Here’s how he responds:

You want to know why I keep saying man? Because women do not have a hero’s journey. At best, women – you – are the goal of the journey. The prize, if you will. At worst, you are the temptress. For the true hero to achieve transcendence he must, as Joseph Campbell told us, ‘press beyond the woman, surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond.’ Today you have illustrated that point as well as any story I can think of. And let me tell you something else. You can consider this a prophecy. Inside the collective is a beast and the beast uses its claws. If you wake the beast the result will be violence. Chaos. I’m sorry to say that these continual protests by radical leftists are going to wake the beast. A beast that you cannot conquer but that will conquer you.

Those last few lines, I freely admitted to the group, were not my own. I cribbed them, almost word for word, from a 2016 Jordan Peterson American radio interview about the Bill C-16 controversy (and, yes, Campbell really did say those things about women and the Hero’s Journey, too). As I discovered, only an almost verbatim quote would do to capture the inimitable blend of quasi-allegorical hyperbole, self-aggrandisement, and rhetorical violence that characterises many of Peterson’s pronouncements. Here’s another taste, referenced in the play, from Peterson’s 2017 interview with Camille Paglia:

When men are talking to each other in any serious manner, that underlying threat of physicality is always there, especially if it’s a real conversation. It keeps the thing civilized to some degree. If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone [for] whom you have absolutely no respect. But I can’t see any way … For example there’s a woman in Toronto who’s been organizing this movement, let’s say, against me and some other people who are going to do a free-speech event. And she managed to organize quite effectively, and she’s quite offensive, you might say. She compared us to Nazis, for example, publicly, using the Swastika, which wasn’t something I was all that fond of. But I’m defenceless against that kind of female insanity, because the techniques that I would use against a man who was employing those tactics are forbidden to me.

In the past, I’ve been accused by Peterson’s fans of – and I quote – ‘stealthily associating’ the man with violence. However, there really is no need to contrive to bracket Peterson and violence together, sneakily or otherwise. In print and in speech, he frequently sounds as though he condones physical violence. But you don’t even have to search as far as Peterson’s more overtly bull-headed statements to uncover the reactionaryism that is indivisible from his cosmology and that of the far right from which he insists on distancing himself.

Take, for example, his curious reading of the Simpsons’ Nelson Muntz, a schoolyard bully whom Peterson venerates for keeping the ‘soft’ kids in check. More seriously, there are Peterson’s strident appeals to traditional gender roles, which underpin his worldview just as surely as they have underpinned all of history’s fascist movements. As I wrote in an essay for this journal last year:

For Peterson, male and female are ‘natural categories’ that describe certain immutable qualities. Archetypally and symbolically, culture, consciousness, and order are all masculine while chaos and the unknown are feminine. The dominance of men over women is not reducible to a ‘disposable, malleable, arbitrary cultural artefact’ like patriarchy, but is ‘permanent’ and ‘real’, stretching back into ancient history… In truth, there is little daylight between the alt-right’s veneration of a certain kind of hyper-masculinity – with all its talk of emasculated ‘cucks’ and ‘soy boys’ – and Peterson’s fascistic preoccupation with weakness and strength (he has said elsewhere that ‘there’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man’). In Peterson’s pseudoscientific worldview, men who are ‘naïve and harmless’, ‘losers’, and ‘useless bastards’ should look to the dominance hierarchies of lobsters for inspiration (a naturalistic fallacy of the kind Peterson often makes). For Peterson – a man apparently frustrated by the social taboo on hitting women with whom he disagrees – all conversations between men (at least those who are worthy of respect) are freighted with violence. That such authoritarian nonsense – all too easily lining up with the vicious bigotry of the online right – should now pass for wisdom says much about the moment we are in.

The cult of tradition. ‘One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.’

The cult of action for action’s sake. ‘Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.’

Fear of difference. ‘The first appeal of a fascist movement or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’

Appeal to social frustration. ‘One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.’

Contempt for the weak. ‘Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.’

Machismo and weaponry. ‘Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.’

Selective populism. ‘There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.’

Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. ‘All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’

The extent to which Peterson’s Weltanschauung generally, and his bestselling self-help book 12 Rules for Life specifically, answers to Eco’s features of fascism is striking (and so too, we might add, to George Orwell’s working definition of fascism as ‘something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class.’). The list describes, in ways too numerous to flesh out here, Peterson’s syncretistic retooling of Christian and secular myth; his disdain for weakness and fetishisation of strength; his appeal among an economically and socially weakened middle class feeling besieged by a perceived rise in status of minority groups; even the strange folksy flavour of much of Peterson’s otherwise sophistic prose. It takes a special kind of myopia to link – as Peterson has repeatedly done – trans activism with the atrocities of the Soviet Union and Maoist China without being able to see the ways in which his worldview connects up with historical fascism and, indeed, the populist and far right movements of today where Peterson has found such support.

The teenagers I worked with last year would confound and perhaps frighten Jordan Peterson. They are comfortable with the fluidities of gender and sexuality that are not ideological constructs but reflections of their experience of the world. Growing up in Adelaide’s low socioeconomic southern suburbs, they are in their own way every bit as disenfranchised as the white, middle-class men who make up Peterson’s most vociferous fan base. But they do not look to regressive appeals to tradition, to machismo and social outgrouping, to guide them.

Rather, they understand, as Nathan J Robinson put it in an essay on Peterson, that ‘the genuinely “heroic” path in life is to band with others to pursue the social good, to find meaning in the collective human striving to better our condition.’ Not for them Peterson’s solipsistic insistence on personal over political change – ‘stand tall’, ‘clean your room’ and all the rest of it – which is where the nihilism that Peterson detects in what he calls ‘cultural Marxism’ truly lies.

For what, after all, does a true liberal have to fear from political change in an increasingly illiberal world?

This is the edited text of a speech given at a Campaign Against Racism and Fascism forum on Jordan Peterson on 12 February 2019, entitled ‘Jordan Peterson: Self-help guru or far-right philosopher king?’

Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places.

If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate.

Ben Brooker is a writer, editor, critic, essayist, and playwright. His work has been featured by Overland, New Matilda, New Internationalist, Australian Book Review, and others. Ben is a co-facilitator of Adelaide’s Quart Short literary reading salons and was an inaugural Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critics Fellow.

Comments

There’s a lot to deconstruct here, unfortunately you’re way off with your critisicsm, but I suppose my biggest gripe is the way you take excerpts of his speech and twist it in a way that helps provoke your point. Let’s start with what your definition of fascism is?

Very weird. First rule: never, ever, take the “turn around the question” bait from a JP fanboi (e.g., “Let’s start with your definition,” or “What’s wrong with what Dr. Peterson says?”). Always ask them to defend JP’s and their own claims, rigorously and with evidence taken from beyond the Führer’s own body of references (and excluding all lazy and mindless blurting about “citation stats,” ffs), and never let up until they do. In virtually all cases, they can’t even articulately summarize what he says, much less provide any truly independent confirmation.

I’m sorry but that just proves you have no real credibility in your beliefs whatsoever. This article is heresay, not a single statistic was used. You wanna debate facts, than let’s go – because I guarantee any Peterson fanboi will bring facts and statistics to the table instead of bullshit opinions. Grow up.

No, no – no “facts” and “statistics,” my little lamb. What I want is actual, documented, entirely independent (of your Führer’s pronouncements) demonstration (not assertion) of every one of his and (even more importantly) your “arguments.” You see, shit-for-brains, repeating JP’s “arguments” doesn’t actually count for anything, given that what’s in question is why anyone should give a rat’s ass about what he, or you, claim about anything whatsoever. He’s not an evolutionary scientist, not a neuroscientist, not a historian, not a literary scholar, not really anything except a quite undistinguished clinical psychologist. So why should anyone pay the slightest attention to anything he says? Surely you, having spent so many hours – perhaps years – drinking deep of the Führer’s wisdom should have a ready answer to this. But don’t worry, I know you don’t (and won’t).

Finally, fuckwit, neither JP nor (to put it mildly) you could “debate” any expert in any of the fields you proclaim expertise. JP’s been called out numerous times, and has maintained a discreet (translation: cowardly) distance. Knowledge doesn’t advance through farcical fucking “debates” anyway, but you are and always will be too dumb to know that.

Stand tall for courage! Clean your room first before you go out to criticise others about the state of theirs. That’s the meaning of Professor Peterson’s statements. Put virtues and morals over values and ethics.

Mankind is being directed by an invisible gnostic hand. Its ultimate goal is to divert mankind’s natural pathway and development. Instead, we’re being pushed into an anti-human state disassociated from its natural being. Man stands on the precipice of a very dangerous journey and all these faddy progressive cultural changes are meant to misguide and mislead. Deviations from nature are dangerous things.

Why is not possible to identify particular personality traits as being counter productive and disempowering. Peterson draws conclusions that can be challenged but at least apply the same intellectual riguor that he does when attempting to represent positions that he holds that you have completely misrepresented.
Your students need not fear Peterson , he has their best interests at heart. He has a path that has proven to transform. Let’s be honest that is what the far left is so frightened of.

Agreed. One thing I’ve admired about Peterson is that despite his extensive academic and clinical background he doesn’t boast that his worldview is infallibile, but is open to discuss it with those who are willing. It’s reminiscent of philosophers of old who debated for mutual benefit rather than winning the intellectual/moral highground.

The nice thing about attacking straw men is that they never talk back. I wonder how many kids fall for this weak wiring style. I only hope that they watch one of his actual talks so they can make up their own mind about his (or anyone’s view). Luckily YouTube generation will not fall for this dribble for mutch longer

It’s a shame you let pride get in the way of your intellect. When you sat yourself down to elegantly critique 12 rules for life, at what point did you stop and question your actions? And by that I mean, what could possibly possess someone to take Petersons words so personally, to the point where they not only convey a public essay for the world to review, but write him into a play, read (I’d hope) the entirety of his book, and see him talk in person, without understanding the slightest views of his philosophy. That is complete and utter nonsense – either you haven’t allowed yourself to fully explore his topics in a proper state of mind, or you simply have far too much suppressed inside – for there is no way, that someone could explore ANY topic without seeing some form of reasoning. Ask yourself this, could you retell all of his views back to him in a way that he would agree with you? If not, then you simply don’t understand him.

Hi Ben, do you enjoy The Simpsons? If you haven’t seen it, you really should watch it. It’s an animated TV show that first aired in 1989 and is still running today. One of show’s most popular characters, Apu, has recently been removed by the producers of The Simpsons because he portrays an Indian stereotype and the audience has been upset at this. I think this intervention by the makers of The Simpsons themselves, of removing Apu from their show,is where a true anti-fascist should test their belief system. That is: “How do I feel about Apu being removed from the show? Would I say to my close friends at dinner, “I’m glad finally that Apu has been removed from The Simpsons. I can now watch the show in good conscience”.

This is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever read about Mr Peterson. His quotes are out of context and missed the point completely of his speeches. You don’t like the bloke, fine. Just don’t write dribble like this. It doesn’t do your reputation any good Mr Booker

“They are comfortable with the fluidities of gender and sexuality” is a wonderful contrast to the frequently absurd world view of Peterson (for the fans: not all absurd). 12 rules is the work of a charleton rather than a fascist. Though I concede if more people want to live in a place like Peterson’s world view, the more fascist the world would become.

You do not understand the world at all. You are quite clearly not willing to have a productive discussion on the issues if you’re so ready to dismiss Peterson as a fascist.
A better conclusion would be, the more people attempt to broaden the definition of the term fascist, the easier it will be for autocrats to control people through fear and hatred

This desperate and sneaky hit-piece takes the contemporary-default tactic of the straw- man and sinks it to new depths of creative propaganda. The author created a character he said was based on Peterson and also an historical figure , and quotes a speech he invented for his fictitious character in a format and praying where the uncareful reader would likely read the invented quote as Peterson , while important parts of it substantially breach key parts of Peterson’s ethical snd philosophical approach .

Additionally, smearing as sexist and misogynist a man brave enough to stand up to the forced lies of C16 , lies that contribute to erasing female as a legal concept and erasing pragmatic female accommodations from law , is an extra layer of cynical misrepresentation.

Overland has in the past been notable for publishing the strong versions of perspectives that might be unpopular – an approach of openness and integrity the Peterson would endorse, and advocates as ” steel- manning “. To see the publication now publishing a dishonest and sneaky hit piece like that one is very disappointing.

They’re hopeless, alas, Evelyn. Nothing shows more clearly just how seriously educational standards in science, history, cultural interpretation – pretty much everything – have fallen than JP’s vast number of lickspittles. The bottom has dropped out of the school system, and things are falling fast.

Why is it every time someone has a criticism the repsonse ‘ohh we hit a nerve’ come up? It’s got to be one of the intellectually lazy responses ever. Not every thing someone says bad about your side is a triggering. Learn to make a real argument

There are so many misrepresentations here it’s daunting to know where to start. To take home of many

Peterson believes chaos and order are fundamental. Neither are perjorative terms. Chaos is the creative whirlwind from which inspiration explodes. Unrestrained it fails to maintain structure and things decay and fade away. Order channels and builds upon inspiration, but becomes tyrannical and corrupt in the absence of chaos. It is not: Order = good Chaos = bad. It is like yin and yang, both are essential and dangerous in their own way. Both keep one another in check. That one is regarded as feminine one as masculine is an irrelevent accident of history for which Peterson bears no resposibility.

It’s the left who regard chaos as bad, project that judgement onto Peterson and the derive volumes of mean spirited conclusion from one huge straw man. Young people should watch his material first hand and be very wary of politically charged diatribes as above.

I think Peterson is banal, but this kind of lazy showboating for the crowd is more banal by an order of magnitude.

It’s always the same tired formula the same hackneyed cloches and shop-worn tropes: the references to theories of fascism, the pursed-lip condemnation of masculinity, the utterly predictable “celebration” of whatever the valorised minority of the day is, even the mention of taking kids from da streets and finding (of course) wonderful theatrical talent. Please, stop, I need insulin!

Look, good for Ben, doing what he does. But this kind of rehearsal of the fascist threat and the joys of socialist solidarity was tired and overworn years ago. Time to write a new script.

Yet another misreading of Peterson’s use of lobsters. He’s never said we need to look to them for “inspiration” as you write; he uses them to demonstrate that dominance hierarchies merely exist in species that are hundreds of millions years old; therefore, he argues, human hierarchies are not a result of corruption or capitalism, but are part of the natural order.
One other point regarding the “waking the beast” comments. Peterson has studied the horrors of Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, and other times in history where identity politics has been taken to the extreme (on the right and the left for that matter). He often says that in his view, whenever societies go down the identity politics route, bad things will happen similar to these atrocities; one will “wake the beast”, as it were. It’s fair enough to consider that a gross exaggeration, but don’t think for a second that’s him condoning or encouraging violence. That’s a complete misunderstanding of what he’s saying. In fact, this quote is one of the quotes used by the radical RIGHT, to accuse him of having a secret left-wing agenda. Don’t believe me? See for yourself: https://youtu.be/WXYuqrO8LLo
And I’ll just mention that Peterson condemns the excesses of the right and the alt-right frequently. It’s very easy to find. He condemns the far left more often because he sees it as having greater influence than the far right at present. Here’s just one example: https://youtu.be/XmcQ6WHaSks

Thank you for this eloquent comment. I quite agree with Peterson about the whole waking the beast thing in regards to the abhorrent and regressive use of identity politics today to stultifying rather than to find solidarity.

I wish he would leave off though with his political classifications (not to mention his rigid concreting of the sexes in with archetypes) cos he misses the mark there. He ALWAYS lumps the modern day use of identity politics in as a tool of the radical left when there’s nothing radical about it at all and in fact it’s the behaviour you’d expect from a rightward-drifting dead-Left. Identity politics is so often practised as something divorced from structural politics that it could only have come from the kind of American liberalism that’s been happy to stand by for 40 years and remain ignorant of its own country’s relentless intervention in other countries’ affairs. Identity politics as now used is a tool the corporatocracy must love. The people dividing and conquering themselves. Fucking awesome. But it’s not radical Leftism.

Damn this piece is terrible. I couldn’t understand half of it because of all the big words being used. Can’t take radical leftists seriously because their views have been practised heavily for the past decade. Suicide rates, autism and mental illness are all much higher than they were 30+ years ago. The conservative values are proven to work, but I guess let’s wait for some more “peaceful religious”, quote enquote, “intruders” to bomb up a few more places. It’s okay lefties, you guys are the first to die. Come crying for the right to save your asses when shit hits the fan.nuff said

How ridiculous! How is Peterson fascist ? He agrees with hierarchy, chaos, and the natural state of man. The socialists on the other had push for the equalising and the subordination of everyone. A completely levelled society is a death sentence for growth. That’s fascism!

I would really wish that the author set up a Youtube channel and then Express his ideas against Dr Peterson. Someday I hope you would get a chance to debate or confront him mano-y-mano because I just want to see Dr Peterson dismantle you piece by piece in an intellectual debate.

I recognize the effort, but seems easy to discover how random sources in the post miss the point of what JBP says. For example in “No, its Not about Criminalizing Pronoun Misuse”, JBP does not says that the purpose is to criminalize, but that it can easily be used in that way, among other important defects. It is also full of misinterpretations/lies like JBP is alt-right, he calls women ‘chaos’, anti-leftist (just anti-extreme-leftist), misogynist (no evidence given, free offense). It sees quite easy for JBP for discredit mate. And I would recommend you to read material of higher quality, if you want to of course.

Mr. Brooker. please take your time to do proper research. Then you would not waste the readers time with your far fetched opinion rather then enlighten with facts.Your article is a desperate attempt and it shines trough. You can do better.

I fail to see how a book that is all about individual improvement = a call to facism. Also those kids you work with can be whatever they want, but they and you have no right to force people to see and express themselves verbally as they and you do. Respect is earned, not innate and your clear intolerance for those who hold more mainstream or traditional ideas is clear testament to your own narrow minded bigotry showing through. You do you, but I think the numbers clearly show which ideas are winning.

It makes me wonder how deep your distortion of reality must be to write a document like this. Where are those far right movements that support Peterson?
Have not the collectivist movements, both left and right, historically undermined the foundations of civilization? How can these people continue to base their arguments on falsehoods without hesitation? It is hard for me to understand, but I hope we reach truth together, and accept and overcome the defects in our hearts. Peace and strength for all.

I suppose you can say that if the Booker’s characterisation of Peterson was accurate it would be right to condemn him.

But Peterson and his ‘fanbois’ almost to a man believe the following: every one should have equal rights before the law. Every single person regardless of race or gender should have the same opportunities. For the same work everyone should be paid the same money regardless of race or gender. Gay people should have the right to marry. Gay couples should be allowed to have and/or raise kids.

These extremely egalitarian views are odd ones to hold if you are a transphobic, homophobic mysogenist white supremacist. But it’s easy enough to find Peterson endorsing them.

Why should it be even remotely fucking enough? There’s not one indication anywhere of what these “studies” are, except for the word of the Führer, whose “scientific expertise” has been ridiculed more times than can be counted. The man has *no* credibility as a scholar of gender, none what-so-fucking-ever. Again, I don’t give a *fuck* what JP says: show me actual studies and counter-studies that I can take to my university colleagues (and I work at a university: a very, very good one) and have evaluated. Otherwise, you’re talking out of your ass. Which, if you believe JP, you have always done, are doing, and always will do. These questions are not simple, although fuckwits like you and JP fantasize that they are.

That is a good one, much better material than the one I feel you should be ashamed of being
publishing everywhere. And probably no serious and honest person would feel bad for wrongly answering that deep Jefferies question.